With one foot firmly planted in the vocal genre of opera and the other foot in musical theater, Siri has found the shoe that fits in the music of Kurt Weill.
Siri began her career as a classical singer. At 17, she followed her voice teacher from Eugene to the University of Kansas where she received her Bachelor’s degree in music. In 2001 Siri was awarded her Master of Music degree at the venerable Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where she then began doctor-al study. While learning the business and craft of opera, Siri found success in performing roles in the more theatrical and contemporary operatic repertoire. At this same time she began singing operatic roles profession-ally for companies such as Cincinnati Opera, Sorg Opera, Eugene Opera, and Bel Canto Northwest.

In 2000 Siri was privileged to be chosen to sing the lead role in the American premiere of The Czar Has His Photograph Taken, an early opera by Kurt Weill. As Weill’s music possesses both the beauty and grand scale of opera as well as the theatricality and edge of Broadway fare, Siri found a home in the Kurt Weill songs and has been singing them to enthusiastic response since. In 2001 she was a National Finalist at the Lotte Lenya Competition for Singers, and in 2003 took first prize. With this honor she was invited to sing at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in Lincoln Center. This opportunity led to numerous Kurt Weill evenings for Cincinnati Opera, Sorg Opera, the Kentucky Governor’s Ball, in New York at open cabarets, and here in Eugene.

Now returned to Eugene by way of a brief sojourn to New York City, Siri juggles motherhood, performance, and the teaching of both classical and theater voice students–not to mention the occasional American Idol hopeful–at Lane Community College as well as privately. She continues to cross the not-so invisible line between classical and musical theater locally. Recently Siri sang Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Lane Community College orchestra and is a regular soloist for major choral works with the Central Lutheran Church Chorale. On the other side of the line, Siri performed Belle in ACE’s Beauty and the Beast in 2005, played both Aunt Em and Glinda in OFAM’s 2007 Wizard of Oz and as Morgan Le Fay in the OFAM 2009 production of A Connecticut Yankee.